


To Dance With Danger

by slightlyrebelliouswriter



Category: The Folk of the Air - Holly Black
Genre: Angst, F/M, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, I lied, Judecardan - Freeform, LMAO, Two Shot, Whump, a hoarder of words, and maybe some fluff, and they will be revealed in this two shot, and you don't have a mop to clean it up, i have theories okay, i'm a hoarder, it was supposed to be a one shot but then my hand slipped and i refuse to part with any of it, jurdan - Freeform, just a bunch of angsty word vomit, just more words, probably some fluff, so i thought this was going to be a two shot, so now it's all coming out in droves, that moment when you realise you've never written angst for your ship, three shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-24
Updated: 2020-05-09
Packaged: 2021-03-01 03:34:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,874
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23298640
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/slightlyrebelliouswriter/pseuds/slightlyrebelliouswriter
Summary: Anon asked: “Can you write something about how Jude gets hurt somewhere and the court of shadows and Cardan go looking for her and then the ghost/roach/bomb finds her and brings her to Cardan. +cute Jurdan moments”Danger was Jude’s constant companion. Cardan would call it her closest friend if he knew not that she often kept her enemies just as close. Fear, slick and icy, wrought his stomach. Jude didn’t need to be warned. She needed to be stopped.
Relationships: Jude Duarte/Cardan Greenbriar, The Bomb/The Roach (The Folk of the Air)
Comments: 98
Kudos: 430





	1. In the Woods Somewhere

**Author's Note:**

> CW: Description of wound. To skip, stop reading between the ~~~.

There was something coming over the horizon that was most certainly not the sun. Jude could see it from the Royal Chamber’s window.

They’d only been asleep an hour or so, and sleep never came to her swiftly, but Jude was surely half-dreaming. She blinked, eyes thick with the warm film of sleep. Yet, there it was still.

A cloud of dense fog, filled with one-thousand pinpricks of flickering blue lights, now sighed over the rolling hills of Elfhame.

Jude gasped. Peeling back the coverlets, she padded over to the large window to get a better look. Through the warped glass, she saw them.

 _Glimpses._ She thought they looked rather like a swarm of fireflies swimming around in a glass of milk.

Tiny glowing wisps of memory, glimpses were basically the cicadas of Faerie. They lived in fog, and only made an appearance every twenty years. It has been said that if you should be so lucky as to catch a glimpse, it could show you the past of any two people.

Clouds of them pooled in the dips and valleys of the world, now, right over the Milkwood.

Jude had never seen a glimpse in person, but she remembered learning about them in one of those long-ago lectures she’d attended with the rest of the children of the gentry. Back when she and Cardan had been enemies.

_No key fits every lock._

Something twisted in Jude’s chest. There were things she had yet to discuss with Cardan. Things she’d wanted to make right for months now. Guilt had wracked her so.

It seemed, however, that being High King and Queen of Elfhame took precedent over everything these days, and Jude simply hadn’t found the time.

Truthfully, it was probably a good thing they’d been kept so busy. Queen of Faerie though she may be, Jude was at a loss for how to start such a conversation, much less carry it out. All attempts at finding the right words had failed her. Miserably.

Then, last night at the revel… _For the great deal many skills my wife makes her master, I’m afraid heeding requests, even my own, is the singular skill which evades her grand arsenal,_ the High King had said, tipsy and riant.

Jude glanced down at her sleeping husband.

A few curls hung a dark curtain across his forehead. Glitter still smudged across his eyes and cheeks, remnants from the night’s festivities. His slightly parted lips, pillow-soft and stained crimson with faerie wine.

Jude liked Cardan all sort of ways, but this was undoubtedly her favourite—unworried, unguarded. As if all the sharp, frayed edges of their pasts had been magically erased.

Sleep made him gentle when the world could not. When _she_ could not.

It was then that Jude knew what she had to do.

She dressed quickly, scribbled a note on a spare bit of parchment, and placed it on her pillow. Taking one last look at Cardan, she brushed a stray curl from his brow before slipping silently out the door.

☽☽☽☽☽

Cardan woke to a draft and made to pull his wife closer, but his arm met empty air and thudded softly against the mattress next to him. Strange. She’d come to bed with him last night, he was sure of it.

His eyes snapped open. Indeed, the bed was empty, save for himself and a tangle of sheets. Cardan sat up straight and rubbed the grogginess from his eyes.

Jude’s side of the bed had gone cold, a piece of folded parchment resting on her pillow instead of her head. He snatched it up.

_Gone hunting, be back by noon._

_I won’t bore you by dying._

_-J_

A small smile tugged at Cardan’s mouth. What he’d once said to her as a mask to conceal the anxiety he’d held many moons ago as he watched her walk into the forest to entreat the other Courts after the bloody coronation, this particular expression had turned into their secret way of abating the other’s worry.

 _I’m going to the mortal realm to visit my family,_ she’d sometimes say. When he’d give her a look pinned primly between worry and genuine sympathy, she’d add, _Promise not to bore you by dying._

 _I’m having lunch with my mother at the Court of Teeth tomorrow,_ he’d sometimes tell her. The first time he’d said that one, Jude had about had an aneurysm behind her carefully neutral expression. So he’d given his wife a reassuring smile, kissed her forehead and said, _I will not bore you by dying, my love._

It perplexed all those within earshot. That their King and Queen should be so cavalier in talks of death when both royals had looked upon that wretched oblivion manyfold, and in a time not so very long gone.

But for Jude and Cardan, it meant, “I’ll be okay.”

Cardan sighed, slumping back against his pillow. He ran a thumb across Jude’s hasty scrawl. Then frowned.

 _Hunting._ Whatever for?

Though well-versed in most every weapon, Jude had never been much one for hunting in all the years he’d known her. Perhaps she’d hidden this part of herself from him. After all, she was full of surprises, his wife. They still had many pieces of their armour left yet to remove.

He glanced toward the window. The shafts of light coming through were still weak with the earliness of day. He couldn’t have been asleep for more than a few hours, and Cardan supposed he would not get any more now. Even if Jude told him not to worry.

There was a stack of letters on the desk in the corner of their room, awaiting his attention and response. He supposed, if he was going to be awake, he might as well make himself useful.

The High King of Elfhame stretched like a cat, then lumbered out of bed.

Cardan read fifteen letters, all in varying shades of sycophantic drivel, and answered them all in turn.

Yes, he would host a revel for midwinter. Yes, all would be welcome.

Deepest apologies, he would not be able to attend the union. All the best to the happy couple.

No, he would not build a wall on the border of the Milkwood and the Crooked Forest. The palace should serve as a demarcation line. If the root men and the sprites are having land disputes, they should solve it civilly rather than inconvenience the traffic flow of all of Elfhame.

Noon came and went, without sign or word from Jude.

 _I won’t bore you by dying_ , she’d said, and Cardan believed her. His wife was ferocious as any of the Fae. Perfectly capable of defending herself.

He could not help the small part of him, though, that dreaded the idea that she would even need to. A small part that reminded Cardan with every passing minute of Jude’s usually assiduous relationship with time.

There was a niggling in the back of his mind. It came in the shape of crashing waves and sleepless nights and the last time Jude was late. She hadn’t come back for weeks.

Cardan pinched the bridge of his nose, squeezing his eyes shut. She’d probably just lost track of time. Or she was already back and had found distractions elsewhere in the palace.

He flexed his hand and looked up from the writing desk for the first time in hours. The large window in front of him revealed a sprawling wood around the palace, covered in thick fog. Beautiful as most October days in Elfhame.

It was only when Cardan really looked at the fog that he began to realise how not-at-all beautiful it truly was.

His heart stumbled.

Not just any fog. A horrifying one. Frothy grey eddies swirled with blinking stars. A glimpsing fog.

Glimpses were totally innocuous creatures unless they decided they liked you. Then, they could make you forget where home is. Or worse, they’d make you believe it was more pleasant there in the fog than any home you’d ever known.

Glimpses could keep you as their prisoner and convince you that you liked it. They’d feed off your memories until you were nought but a husk. Worse still, their magic was different to that of mere Fae ensorcellment; more akin to a siren’s song, the pull of faerie music, or the rapture of the Everapple.

It was the kind of magic Jude possessed no geas against.

Cardan scrambled for the wardrobe, flinging the wooden doors open and caring not when they bounced back on theirs hinges to smack him in the elbows. He was already rummaging through bolts of silk and suede for his cloak.

He had to warn Jude, had to find her and make sure she knew. If she was going to hunt, she had to understand the risks, the dangers of being out in the woods during a Glimpsing fog.

Then, Cardan stilled, cloak in hand.

_Gone hunting._

Oh, his crafty wife. His deceitful, cunning, guileful wife. He was a fool not to have seen it from the start.

Jude was no foreigner to danger. Always, she was two steps ahead of it, if not sweeping around it on light feet, a veritable dance of peril. She’d grown eyes in the back of her head so that she might always be looking for it.

Danger was Jude’s constant companion. Cardan would call it her closest friend if he knew not that she often kept her enemies just as close.

Fear, slick and icy, wrought his stomach. Jude didn’t need to be warned. She needed to be stopped.

☽☽☽☽☽

There was great risk in coming here. Jude knew it the moment the plan had formed in her head. Trying to catch a glimpse was a dangerous game to be sure.

When she left the palace that morning, she headed for a pool of fog that had settled only a couple miles from the palace. She had three glass jars and a knife in her bag. She walked and walked and then, suddenly, she’d arrived at the edge of the swirling cloud of grey.

Now, she sat behind a boulder, waiting for a glimpse to come close enough so she might grab it. This part of the Milkwood was full of jagged rocks, and though there were places flat enough for Jude to stand, there were also steep slopes and cliff faces. The land dipped, turning valleys and gorges into cornucopias for the fog to settle.

The air was thick and had an odd glaucous colour to it. It smelled of lavender and honey. Fog combed through the foliage like curling fingers, almost putting Jude in a trance. From the midst of it all, dozens of glimpses blinked their dreary blue glow, emitting small sighs which echoed off the gorge walls in a lamenting cacophony.

Then, she saw one. Just atop a nearby cliff, at the very outskirts of the dense haze.

Slyfooting to the bottom of the rock so as not to attract the attention of other glimpses lurking nearby, Jude moved without a sound; but Cardan’s voice from the revel still rang in her ears.

_Heeding requests, even my own, is the singular skill which evades her grand arsenal._

She put a hand flat against the cliff’s face. It was cold as ice and damp. Sure to be slippery. Jude adjusted the bag on her shoulder, slid the hilt of her knife between her teeth, and began climbing.

That had been her first mistake. She should have found an easier route up. She should have waited until another a more convenient opportunity presented itself.

Jude’s fingers went numb before both feet even left the ground. She flexed them, trying to will feeling back into her bones. But they were stiff like someone had slipped sandpaper between her joints. Or concrete.

About halfway up, she heard the sounds of glimpses drawing closer. They sang their woeful sighs in swells. Jude knew she had to hurry. She reached for a handhold but found it was more shadow than handhold. A belated realisation.

Her grip slipped, and in her surprise, so did her feet. Jude’s heart flew to her throat. She heard the knife, no longer held between her teeth, clatter against the rock.

Then, something sharp and hot speared through her left knee. It was all she could do to keep hold of the wall with one hand. She dangled there for a moment, heart racing, knee searing, trying to catch her breath.

It all but ran away from her.

The pain did not stop and neither did her heart and neither did the overwhelming sense that she was in very grave danger. But she swallowed that thought back like a bitter pill, just as she’d done so many times before in Faerie.

She scrabbled her feet against the rock, trying to gain purchase. By the time she regained her grip, Jude was gulping in the cool morning air. It burned like frost in her lungs, offsetting the pain in her knee. A pool of warmth spread down the leg of her trousers. She didn’t need to look down to know it would be blood.

All things considered, Jude knew she would not be able to climb down from this height. She most definitely would not be able to climb up. If she stayed here, she would bleed herself into unconsciousness and likely fall to her death.

Jude willed her mind to clear. To her right, she spotted an opening in the cliff’s face. Using her left leg as little as possible she started scrambling over to the cave.

Every minute movement sent a slice of agony through her. It muddled her mind, sometimes blurring her vision. She gritted her teeth and tried not to make a sound. It was very essential that she did not, for the glimpses would surely come for her then. Being quiet was easier said than done, however, when you’re high off the ground and haemorrhaging all over the rock you’re clinging to for dear mortal life.

Finally, Jude made it to the cave’s cool darkness. She examined her injury immediately, slumping against one of the cave walls.

The left leg of her trousers was torn and wet with blood. All Jude could seem to think about was how grateful Tatterfell would be that she’d chosen to wear black today. All they would need is a wash and a simple mending and her trousers would be good as new.

The ridiculousness of that thought made Jude laugh a rasping, dry laugh. Maybe the pain had made her delirious. Or the blood loss. There really was a lot of blood.

**~~~**

Biting her cheek against the pain, Jude pulled the fabric away from her knee, revealing a wound so angry and red and full of grit that she drew a hissing breath through her teeth. Her stomach churned as she gazed upon the slick sinews of muscle. She could feel the beginnings of bruises blossoming around the wound like hydrangeas around a ruddy garden gate.

**~~~**

It was a wretched awful sight.

She had nothing to clean it with. So much in a hurry she’d been, and thinking, rather naively, that this would be an easy quest, she hadn’t even brought a water-skin. So Jude did the only thing she knew to do. She tore a strip of fabric off the end of her tunic and knotted it into a makeshift tourniquet just above her knee.

After she was done, Jude let her head loll back against the cool wall of the cave. She stayed like that, staring up at the ceiling for hours. Or maybe it’d only been minutes. Either way, she’d been a proper idiot.

A thick blanket of clouds squatted in the sky, dulling the sun’s light and making it difficult for Jude to tell what time it was. She’d told Cardan in her note that she’d be back by noon, but there was a likelihood he would stay asleep until nightfall, totally unaware of the danger she was in.

Worryingly, the gash had kept up a steady trickle of blood. Jude was starting to feel woozy. It would be stupid to fall asleep, as enticing as it seemed. But sleep coated the edges of her mind in sweet syrup, nonetheless.

Jude had survived a good deal many things before this. She’d thought she could survive a fog. Now, she was not so sure.

☽☽☽☽☽


	2. Follow You Down To the Red Oak Tree

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “The only thing he knew was the weight on his chest, two boulders sinking into the concavity of his lungs. How furious he was with Jude, and how much that didn’t matter. That her favourite flower was the blue bellflower, and its petals were falling from the throne.” 
> 
> Please forgive me.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: Mild cursing. Minor mentions of abuse (~) and vomit (*); Paragraphs containing these sensitivities have been marked with the allocated warnings. Major descriptions of pain and delusions; If you are sensitive to these things, please contact me, and I will send you an edited sensitivity version.

She’d never considered herself stupid. 

Foolish, maybe once or twice. But Jude Duarte-Greenbriar was never an idiot outright. So it came as a great shock to her when she found herself bleeding out in a cave in the middle of the Milkwood.

Wouldn’t this be a hilarious way to go? All her life, Jude had been worried about time peeling her right out of her own mortal skin. Yet here she was, dying from a paltry cut.

That last thought, she _knew_ was stupid. This was more than a paltry cut. It throbbed like a second heartbeat and burned like her knee was a plate of scrambled eggs someone was pushing around with a fork.

A small pool of spilled blood darkened the ground near her ankles. Sometimes, her vision narrowed, blurred.

Perhaps this was one last way for the stars to taunt her. Give her everything she ever wanted and more than she could possibly hope for; a grand feast befitting of a Queen, spread out just for her; then rip her away from herself like the tablecloth in one of those mortal magic tricks.

Jude was not afraid. 

When you’d lived your whole life knowing the promise of death was the single certainty of your existence, you tended to come to terms with it. So Jude did not fear dying. Only the horrible, yawning oblivion that came after.

☽☽☽☽☽

It was a quarter past one, and Cardan’s feet were flying. Out his chamber doors, down the spiral stairs, right to the little wooden door opposite the library, which he promptly began pounding on.

There was a groan within, some shuffling. Then, “It’s the middle of the day, for Mab’s sake,” a groggy voice came muffled from behind the door. “What could possibly be so—oh.”

The Bomb, all messy-haired, eyes squinting at the brightness of the hall, let the door creak open a fraction before realizing who exactly had summoned her from sleep. She opened the door in full.

“Cardan—erm, I mean… Your Majesty,” she said, brows furrowing. “To what do we owe the pleasure?”

“Pleasure?” Another even-more-groggy voice came from inside the room. “I’ve got a mallet hammering at my brain thanks to him. Bloody pusher. You can tell His Majesty to kindly sod off.” The Roach held a pillow over his gnarled green head and a rude finger up in the direction of the door.

“Van,” the Bomb tutted over her shoulder. She pulled her dressing gown tight around her and faced the High King again. Only then did she seem to register the look on his face.

“Liliver,” Cardan said, frantic. His mind was all static, hollow—so very full of nothing. Words felt like they came through a tangle of tree sap and brambles in his throat. “It’s Jude.”

That’s all it took. 

The Court of Shadows was moving, the guard summoned. Even the Roach managed to scrape himself together. The Ghost slipped into their ranks just as they were passing through the throne room, and informed the High King he’d done a sweep of the palace, just to be sure.

“And?” Cardan demanded, pivoting on his heel to face the sharpshooter.

“She’s not here,” the Ghost said.

Cardan’s mouth set into a grim line. He gave a curt nod, but his stare lingered on the dais. Where the pair of thrones sat, a latticework of woven roots and blossoms. They seemed to be holding their breath, too.

From the back of the leftmost royal seat, a deep blue flower petal shivered. Then it was falling in listless swoops and dives, whispering across the seat of the chair.

_Hurry._

“Get a carriage,” Cardan said, just loud enough to be heard. The room was silent as a snowbank. “ _Go._ ”

There was a beat. Then, the din of metal and rushing of boots and they were all moving again.

The High King and his men took to the forests, guarded with crossbows and swords that might as well be spoons for how much they would protect against the glimpses.

Cardan didn’t know why his wife had decided to catch a glimpse. He had even less of a clue as to why she thought she had to do it alone.

The only thing he knew was the weight on his chest, two boulders sinking into the concavity of his lungs. How furious he was with Jude, and how much that didn’t matter. That her favourite flower was the blue bellflower, and its petals were falling from the throne.

☽☽☽☽☽

Night was encroaching. This, Jude only knew because the game she’d invented—finding pictures in the cracks and shadows of the cave wall to beat back the tide of sleep—was becoming more and more difficult.

She shivered. She wasn’t sure how long she’d been lying there, but the fever had set in.

Jude couldn’t even remember the last time she’d had a fever. It must’ve been when she was six or seven. When she was still living in the mortal world and her mother was still alive to take care of her and getting fevers was the most of her worries.

Eva had climbed into her bed with two washcloths and snuggled up real close. 

She’d sat there for hours, pressing the warm compress to Jude’s forehead when she was too cold and the cold compress to her forehead when she was too warm. Telling her stories of magical places. Feeding her saltines and seltzer.

Jude had wholly forgotten how it felt to have a fever. It was as if she was being filled to the brim with hot wax and dunked in a bucket of ice water at the same time.

She’d only recently rediscovered how it felt to be comforted. She wondered if she’d ever feel that again.

Maybe, Jude thought, she could imagine herself some comfort. She was so very good at lying, after all. Maybe she could lie to herself. Just for a little while. 

She stared up at the ceiling, listening to the woeful sighs of the glimpses ebb and flow from outside the cave.

She imagined lying next to Cardan in their bed in the Royal Chambers. With nowhere to be and nothing to do, Cardan would cocoon them both in satin sheets, trace lazy shapes around her bare shoulders with the tips of his fingers. Pepper her back with nips and kisses. 

He would agree to be the big spoon for once since she was the one in need of comforting.

“Jude,” he would say softly, caressing her cheek, brushing the hair away from her eyes, “You are perhaps the single most important thing in my life.”

She’d turn her head to nuzzle the crook of his neck. “And you, mine, my love,” she’d say. He smelled like fallen leaves. And burnt toast.

Jude crinkled her nose. Odd. He didn’t usually smell like burnt toast. Had they just had breakfast? She couldn’t remember….

“I don’t understand.” Cardan’s voice was dipped in worry, and he paused the soothing circles of his fingers.

“Cardan,” Jude said, rolling her eyes, “We’ve been over this. I want to be here. I want to be with you. I love you.” 

Sometimes her husband just needed a little reminding. Sometimes she preferred to give him that reminder in other, much more wicked ways. Perhaps today she would give him both.

A sinful smile curled the corners of Jude’s lips. She turned around in Cardan’s arms to face him fully and was about to seal the morning off with a kiss, followed by further disreputable behaviour, when she noticed the look on his face.

It was the same one he wore when he’d looked at her from the riverbank after pushing her in a lifetime ago. The same one that had graced his face when she’d first placed that crown atop his head.

Now, in the bed they shared, Cardan looked at her with nothing but cold ire. “How could you do it?” he whispered, and Jude’s brow furrowed.

“What do you mean?” She didn’t know why, but something slick like tar settled in the pit of her stomach. She wanted him to smooth the crease between her brows. To kiss her forehead and call her his darling god.

But Cardan’s face remained a glacial effigy of the man she’d come to love. With nothing but disdain, he looked down his nose at her and asked, “How could you kill him? How could you murder my brother?”

 ** _*_** Jude sat up straight and vomited all over the cave floor. Then, she was pulled out to sea by a riptide of sleep.

☽☽☽☽☽

The High Queen of Elfhame was spinning. Round and round, a circle of fever dreams.

It was like sitting on a merry-go-round and looking in towards the centre where all those mirrors usually hang. Watching whirling versions of things and lights and yourself pass you by in the reflective panels moving in the opposite direction. 

One terrible vision after the next.

Locke’s water-logged body, blue-green and covered in seaweed, standing at the mouth of the cave. Valerian, dirt pouring from between his teeth as he smiled, walling up the entrance with stones, then filling the cave with blood. Balekin ensorceling her to kiss him, then turning into a giant moth right as her lips touched his. Cardan’s head on a pike with upturned eyes, jaw dropped as if mid-warning. A voice in her head.

_Heeding requests, even my own, is the singular skill which evades her grand arsenal._

_No key fits every lock._

_I do not want Balekin dead._

_How could you do it? How could you murder my brother?_

Perhaps this is what she deserved. Perhaps she was a monster who couldn’t control herself long enough to keep from hurting those she loved, no better than Madoc. Perhaps Valerian’s curse was coming to fruition, after all.

If Jude could have laughed, she would have. But she could not. Dark waves lapped at the shores of her consciousness; and who was _she_ to ignore the sea?

☽☽☽☽☽

Eventually, there was another voice in her head.

 _Shit_ , it said. Yes, she really was in very deep shit.

 _I FOUND HER,_ it bellowed, splintering her thoughts. She wondered if she should tell the voice to shut up. Though, it probably already knew that’s what she wanted, since it was in her head, and had probably heard her think it.

It was getting crowded in here. Her head was a swollen, throbbing balloon.

 _Fucking shit_ , the voice repeated.

 _Well_ , she thought, that was quite rude. No way to address a lady such as herself. Whoever she was.

Something prodded her leg. 

A sudden, violent wave of pain swept over her. It rose and rose and rose, but never fell. Darkness pulled her to its depths again.

☽☽☽☽☽

_Can you hear me?_

_Stay awake. Stay. Awake._

**_*_** The voice was urgent. And constant. And very annoying. It felt like a cheese grater running down her mind. Her throat burned. Maybe the voice had run a cheese grater over that, too. Her hand slid into something wet. It smelled like sick.

Then, there was a cold compress on her forehead.

“Mom?” she croaked, her voice like cracked plaster. She lifted the heavy weight of her eyelids.

A figure was looming over her. It was too dark to see who, but her heart thrashed against her chest, all the same. This was another terrible dream. She was not sure she could take another one of those. Then again, she was in no position to fend it off if it decided to come. She was in no position to do _anything_ , really.

“Not mom, Your Majesty,” the figure sighed, removing the compress. “You’re burning up.” 

Not a compress. Hands.

“Whose Majesty?” she asked through the haze in her mind. Everything was so confusing. Everything was also spinning.

She heard rummaging. Next thing she knew, a match had been struck, and the room filled with warm light. The figure looking down at her was indeed a woman, though it was indeed not her mother.

She had familiar plumes of white hair circling her head like smoke. Full, wine-red lips pressed into a weak smile. “Hello, Jude,” the woman said.

Yes, that must be who she was. She opened her mouth to thank the beautiful woman for the reminder, but all Jude could seem to do was squint. She knew this woman from somewhere.

“I’m going to pick you up now, okay?”

Jude could not muster the wherewithal to reply. Strong hands gripped her shoulders, slid gingerly under her knees. Then, the world tilted, shifted, until she was right up against something warm and solid.

Jude looked up at the woman. “You’re ethereal,” she murmured, staring up at the soft planes of her face. Blush blossomed a stain of pink across the woman’s cheeks. “Are you god?”

The woman snorted, then. Jude didn’t understand what was so funny. It seemed a perfectly reasonable question to ask. Since she was dying, and all.

“That’s quite enough of _that_ , Your Majesty,” the woman said. “Let’s get you home.”

 _Home,_ Jude mused. She’d thought she _was_ home, but maybe… she was wrong? Wherever home was, it sounded nice. She should like to go there someday.

☽☽☽☽☽

She was deep inside a cave. She could see nothing, but echoes of conversation pinged off the walls.

_Delirious. Didn’t know who I was._

_Reckon it’s the fever?_

_The infection perhaps?_

_Could be, but you need to keep her awake._

_Can I hold her? Please?_

The moon was a Cheshire cat smile above her. It grinned, then shattered into one hundred panes of opaline glass—a dragonfly’s wing, splitting her knee wide open.

☽☽☽☽☽

When Jude woke again, she knew she was home. 

She was being jostled around a bit, and her leg felt like someone had set it on fire, but she didn’t mind. She was wrapped in something soft. The sound of hooves on packed earth thundered in her ears.

Her name was being called.

“Jude,” someone said, over and over, a litany. A curse. “Jude, my love, you mustn’t fall asleep. You must stay awake. Can you do that for me, Jude? Please, stay with me.”

She opened her eyes. Blinked slow. The disembodied voice belonged to someone. That someone cradled her in his lap, holding her face between his hands. Everything was blurry but she’d know those hands anywhere.

“Jude?” he whispered.

She summoned the tattered bits of her strength, lifting her hand to cover one of his. It was shaking.

“I know you,” Jude said, willing her eyes to focus. A keening sound tore from him.

 _Him._ She knew his name. _What was it?_ Her mind was so muddled by exhaustion and the riot of pain in her left leg, she could not remember. She was so angry at herself for not remembering.

Jude frowned. Huffed. Tried to refocus her eyes. It was the most important name, more important even than her own. She was a terrible person for forgetting it. She was pretty sure she was a terrible person anyway, but forgetting his name made her even worse.

She lifted a hand to his cheek. Her frown deepened. “Why is your face wet?”

“Because I’m very worried for my wife,” he said, in a strained sort of voice.

“You have a wife?” Envy billowed, a parachute in her chest. Which was ridiculous. She couldn’t even see this man. How could she possibly know if she was jealous?

He breathed a laugh. “Yes,” he told her, stroking her hair gently. “She is a headstrong, ornery fool who apparently holds a vendetta against my poor nerves.”

Everything was quite difficult at the moment. All Jude could think was how beautiful this man’s voice sounded and how very badly she wanted to go back to sleep.

“Hmm.” She closed her eyes again. “She sounds awful.”

“No,” he said. “She is not.”

☽☽☽☽☽

 ** _*_** Watching his wife being carried off like a rag doll into the Royal Chambers, blood-spattered and covered in her own sick ** _,_** Cardan Greenbriar had never felt so small.

 ** _~_** He felt smaller now than when Dain had tricked him, and he’d been kicked out of the palace for a murder he did not commit. Smaller now than all the times Balekin had removed his belt. Smaller now than when he was a kid crawling beneath the dining table, scrounging for scraps of food and attention.

The Bomb had explicitly forbidden Cardan from accompanying them further than the ante-chamber.

“If I’m going to heal her,” she’d said to him firmly, pausing outside the bedroom doors, “I’m going to need the utmost focus. Which will certainly not be achieved by you being in there, all blubbering and sentimental. So unless you know anything about mortal biology…”

Cardan had never in his life wished to be mortal; but suddenly, the desire to be one was visceral. He’d never wanted to lie more than he did at that moment. He tried to will the words past his lips, but they snagged in his throat. 

He was unable as ever.

So he’d been kicked out of his own bedroom. Away from his own wife. Who may or may not be dying.

The matter was still inconclusive. Cardan read it on the faces of the cycle of people poking their heads out in intervals to check on him or bring him tea. Sometimes, it was the Roach. Sometimes, the Ghost. Only once was it the Bomb, who had been hard at work for endless hours, and needed a break. 

Her face was just as dour as the rest.

“I know how you’re feeling,” she muttered, sliding down the wall to sit next to him on the floor just outside the bedroom doors. “If you need to talk—”

“What I _need,_ Liliver, is for you to heal her,” Cardan snapped. 

He regretted the words as soon as he’d said them. She was only trying to comfort him. She, too, had once been forced to watch as her beloved toed the line between life and death. Right now, though, the High King did not have the strength to feel sorry for anyone but himself.

The Bomb only nodded. Once, short and curt. She left him to his misery after that. Cardan supposed he’d probably have a lot of apologizing to do to a lot of people by the end of this.

A while later, and rather belatedly, he realised he could very well just barge in there and demand to stay. Magical oath or not, he was still High King. They would still listen to him. 

But maybe the Bomb had a point. Maybe it would only make him more anxious and impede on Jude’s progress. If that was true, maybe nothing was the most he could do.

All his life, he’d spent doing most every childish thing. He’d tugged on the tails of cats, threw tantrums when he didn’t get his way, threatened people when they offended him. 

Now, Cardan sat there on the floor with his head in his hands, doing absolutely nothing, and felt more like a child than ever.

☽☽☽☽☽

Jude was a dragonfly hovering over water, dipping in and out of sleep. She was flying and then sinking and then flying again.

It went like this for a while. She’d fall asleep in one place and drift to the surface of consciousness in another. Sometimes she felt no pain. Sometimes she felt a great deal of pain all at once. The latter would usually send her careening back into nothingness.

On occasion, she’d awaken just long enough to recognize the faces floating in and out of her vision. The Roach, with his scythe of a nose. The Ghost, with his sandy hair and silent demeanour. The Bomb, who Jude had a strange, vague feeling was blushing every time she looked at her. She even recognized a nurse or two.

Always, there were people. There was one face, however, that she did not see.

“Bomb,” Jude rasped, and the faerie’s eyes met hers. “If I die, would you tell him I hated him? Tell him that’s why I did it.”

“What do you mean?” The Bomb asked. But Jude was already drifting again.

☽☽☽☽☽

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AN: I am…so sorry. I’ll be the first to say, I am the absolute worst for telling you guys this was going to be a two-shot and then leaving this on such a cliffhanger and making you wait for a third part. Don’t hate me? The good news is, I have a lot of the last part written. The bad news is, the last part is what has been keeping me from updating– writing it feels more and more like giving birth with each passing day.
> 
> So if you enjoyed this part, and would like to give me some writerly encouragement in the form of a comment/kudos/keyboard smash/message/ask, any and all of the above would basically be like giving me a dose of that sweet, sweet epidural and I would be forever grateful :’)
> 
> If you’d like to be updated on the next part of this Three-Shot (to come very soon), let me know and I’ll add you to the tag list! I am slightlyrebelliouswriter23 on Tumblr. Back to the woods now. -em 🖤💫
> 
> Title Inspo: Follow You Down to the Red Oak Tree by James Vincent McMorrow


	3. From the Woods

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> These feelings lingered, dripping as fresh wounds. He felt them all anew. “I wish it had been me instead,” Cardan said.

The High King of Elfhame was overwrought and pacing.

In the sitting room of the royal chambers, time became a blur of hushed voices and pitying looks, little clay cups filled with tea and a panoply of offerings. Everything from handkerchiefs to the strongest wines from the farthest bowels of the palace cellar, shoved in front of him as if they beheld some magical cure to the awfulness of what he was feeling.

They did not.

Cardan knew the oblations were meant as comforts, but he didn’t want them. There was a sickly feeling in his stomach. It curdled like bad milk and guilt, and only made the consoling worse.

So the High King refused everything, even the wine. Wine was what he used when he could afford to feel nothing, and this was not one of those occasions. A twisted part of him wanted to soak in every horror of the last day—to make a tender meal of pain.

It was the least of what he deserved.

Cardan was busy wearing a faded track into the great ornate rug in the sitting room, tail lashing back and forth, when Vivienne showed up.

The eldest Duarte flew into the antechamber, face sallow with panic. Suddenly, every explanation Cardan had mulled over these many hours burst in his head like overripe fruit when he grasped for them.

How could he explain this to Vivi when he could hardly explain it to himself? How could he tell her that he’d stood by as Jude stumbled to the brink of death, yet again?

So, Cardan stood frozen near the bookshelf at the opposite end of the room, watching Vivi cross the length of it. Her hair was plastered to the sides of her face, the mortal clothes she wore soaked through as if she’d rode through a torrent to get there.

Just as he opened his mouth to speak, a heavily pregnant woman entered.

Cardan stilled. For a heart-stopping moment, it was Jude coming through those doors in a gown of dusky rose that swished about her ankles like bulrushes when she walked—one hand resting protectively over her swollen belly.

A ludicrous thought, if he’d ever had one. Jude was not pregnant, at least as far as Cardan was aware. He frowned.

Always he’d been able to tell his wife from her twin. Only when his wits had been poison addled and bewitched by Grimsen’s monstrosity earrings had he ever mistaken one for the other. Now, it was some cruel taunt his mind had spun up from its sleep-deprived and fraying edges.

A lump nestled right in Cardan’s throat. He was unable to meet Taryn’s eyes after that.

“How is she?” Vivi asked as they approached.

Cardan swept up a sprig of baby’s breath from a cut crystal vase on the bookshelf and swallowed. “I do not know.” He leaned back against the wall. “They have barred the door to everyone.”

Vivi’s mouth set into a hard line. “Even you?”

“Especially me,” he said, voice stretched taut. He twirled the stem between his fingers. “The Bomb forbade it.”

“Forbade?” Vivi’s eyebrows rose high on her forehead.

Taryn looked like he’d told her something offensive.

“Well, not expressly. But the implication was clear enough,” he told them, which made Vivi’s face turn a half-amused expression, though Cardan could not imagine why. He lolled his head back against the wall, looking down the bridge of his nose at the pair of them. “I would be too overcome by my emotions to be of any use.”

“You’re the High King, though,” Vivi said as if he needed reminding. “If you want to be in there, you need only demand it.”

“Yes,” Cardan sighed. “But alas, I’m afraid she is right. I would only get in the way.” He scrubbed a hand over his face. A shrill, sharp pain had started in his feet.

The sitting room was not devoid of places to sit, by any means.

There were several cushioned chairs of fern-green velvet, a handful of upholstered stools dotted about, a large plushy sofa by the fireplace. In the corner, sat a divan crafted to look like a mermaid lying on its side in the waves—an opulent wedding gift from Nicasia, if not a bit on the nose.

Even the rug he’d been pacing probably would not be so bad to sit on.

Instead, Cardan slid down the wall, taking up a spot on the floor. Vivi followed suit, sitting cross-legged in her wet jeans and hoodie on the carpet. Taryn perched herself atop a small cushioned stool, surprisingly prim for a woman at her ripe stage of gestation.

They sat together in exhausted quiet. Runny green light from the wall sconces made the room seem bathed in faerie wine. A pixie with citrine hair brought a towel to Vivi, who was doing a good job of dripping a small pond onto the rug.

Cardan hadn’t cared enough to notice.

Vivi gave an appreciative nod to the chambermaid and began patting her hair with the towel. The pixie returned a few moments later with a tea tray and placed it on a nearby bench before making her exit.

Cardan peeled at the stem in his hands. Taryn fidgeted with the tassels on her stool. Vivi dried herself as best she could, observing the High King while she worked. He could feel her curious stare as he tore off little blooms and scattered them across the floor.

“How are you, Cardan?” Vivi finally asked.

He picked another white bud. “How do I look?”

“Like death.”

Cardan furrowed his brows. “I feel much worse than that.”

In the last day, such a riot of emotions had lay siege to him, he could hardly tell one from the next. They all smeared together like someone had swiped a hand through the oil painting of his mind.

“What happened?” Taryn said when a moment had passed.

Unable to lie and unable to give a concise excuse for Jude’s plight, Cardan began to recount the day’s tale. How it had all started with a deceptive note and had quickly spiralled into a horror from hell.

Leaving out his personal sentiments did nothing to ward them off. The fear that something had happened to Jude, the dread he’d felt when he figured out where his wife had truly gone, the terror of finding her in her grave state. Anger, too. Flashes of it, hot and streaking across his fretful night like stars.

These feelings lingered, dripping as fresh wounds.

He felt them all anew.

“I wish it had been me instead,” Cardan said, at last.

Speaking everything aloud, he felt no less awful, but he was far less alone. The stem of baby’s breath in his hands was now just a stem; having picked off all the blooms and leaves. Silence draped heavy festoons in the air around them.

When Cardan glanced up, Taryn was giving him a strange look.

“Have I told the story wrong?” He asked her, adust. Whatever Taryn was piecing together in her head, she need not gawk. He was tired of all the gawking, the tiptoeing. As if he was a thin layer of ice and not the whole frozen lake.

“It is no small thing to offer your life in someone’s stead,” Taryn pointed out. “Especially when you could live forever. Even more so when you are bound by your word.”

“Well, and I would,” Cardan said. A muscle twitched in his jaw. “Unfortunately, no amount of words or promises from me will make it so.”

Taryn folded her hands in her lap. “You must love her very much.” Then, hastily amended, “I knew you cared for her, of course. I just did not know how deeply.”

Cardan blinked. He was unsure of whether to be glad for his transparency now, in such dire circumstances, or offended that anyone had doubted the depth of his feelings for his wife in the first place.

He was saved from deciding when the doors to the chamber opened.

Cardan, Vivi, and Taryn scrambled to their feet. Two nurses exited the royal bedroom, one with great horns sweeping skyward from the crown of her head, the other with brown feathered wings sprouting from his back. They kept their expressions carefully neutral and closed the doors behind them.

“Any news?” Taryn asked, breathless.

Cardan could barely breathe, himself.

“Her Majesty is stable, my Ladies. Your Majesty,” the horned nurse replied, giving the High King a polite curtsy. The entire room seemed to exhale, at once. “The doctor will be out shortly to oversee your visitation.” With that, the nurses quit the chambers.

Cardan’s eyes flitted to the large oak doors of their bedroom. They suddenly seemed very small and very far away.

Cardan felt a hand alight on his shoulder. “I know what you’re thinking.” Vivienne’s voice came to him. Ripping his focus from the doors, he turned to face her fully.

Vivi’s cat eyes nearly glowed in the verdant light. “This is not your fault, you know.”

“Isn’t it?” Cardan lifted a brow. “Jude is my wife. We are supposed to tell each other things. I have little doubt she knew the danger, and yet, she did not tell me of this. What does that say about me?”

“It says more about Jude, I think.”

At that moment, the Bomb slipped out of the bedroom, carrying a basket of bloody rags. She placed it on a lectern, close by. “I had to put her under with a sleeping draught,” she told them, eyes darting from face to face. “She’s still out, but she will recover eventually. You may see her now.”

Taryn and Vivi rushed for the doors without hesitation. When Cardan made to follow, the Bomb held out a hand to stop him.

“I should like to speak with you alone, Your Majesty,” she said in a low voice. Her gaze was sharp, turned shard-like by fatigue and worry. “I have to tell you something.”

Cardan’s heart sunk low in his chest. Whatever news the Bomb bore, he suspected it was not happy. She glanced toward the door, making sure Vivi and Taryn were well inside the room, before turning back to him.

“What is it, Liliver?” Cardan dreaded the answer before it came.

The Bomb pursed her lips. “It’s about something Jude said. Right before she went under.”

**☽☽☽☽☽**

The High Queen of Elfhame was dreaming. She was sure of it because her husband, whom she was fairly certain resented her dearly, was reading something aloud.

She heard the fluttering of pages. Perhaps it was their terms of annulment.

His voice came soft and muffled, as if through several closed doors. “ _I wonder if the snow_ loves _the trees and fields, that it kisses them so gently? And then it covers them up snug, you know, with a white quilt; and perhaps it says ‘Go to sleep, darlings, till the summer comes again.’”_

That was indeed how his voice sounded. Like a downy quilt, cocooning her. Through the thick sludge of sleep, she wondered if, after everything, he could still love her as the snow did the trees.

**☽☽☽☽☽**

When Jude woke once more, she was too warm. A sheen of sweat clung to her skin like morning dew. Or, more probably, like a layer of dirt. A film she couldn’t quite pare.

It felt like she hadn’t bathed in a week.

She recognized the royal chambers. The great sweep of their bed; the large cherrywood wardrobe where they kept all their clothes, heaps of chiffon and lace spilling out of looking glass doors. The writing desk by the window, a mess of papers and ink pots.

On the bedside table, there sat the well-worn copy of a familiar two-book bind-up she’d once pilfered from Hollow Hall.

Everything was quiet. Still. Only the crackle and low amber light from the fire filled the room. Apparently, everyone had vacated.

Everyone, except for one person.

He sat next to the bed in a chair, scooted right up close so he could hold her hand. He was holding her hand in both of his, head bowed to press against them on the mattress. His hair stuck up, every which way, as if he’d been raking anxious hands through it.

Jude felt her heart hitch in her chest.

“Your hair looks like a coppice,” she croaked.

Cardan’s head snapped up. He stared at her with bleak eyes, rimmed in red fatigue. He was staring at her, not saying anything; but he was holding her hand, and that was all that mattered.

Then, he dropped it.

Which was the opposite of what she wanted.

Jude surveyed him more closely. The dim light threw shadows across Cardan’s face that made him appear more haggard than she’d ever seen him, though still ruinously beautiful.

He was looking at her like if he blinked, she might turn to dust.

After a long moment, Jude cleared her throat. “How long have I been out?” Speaking felt sand-papery, but she had to say _something_.

“Three days,” Cardan murmured.

Her brows snapped up. Had it really been that long? She must have been completely unconscious for a lot of it.

Her muscles did feel stiff. She tried to stretch, but winced, remembering her leg. It didn’t hurt, not like before. Now, it was a mere dull throb.

Jude dared a look down.

Her trousers and tunic had been removed, replaced with a thin, white nightgown. Her left knee was wrapped in a heavy chrysalis of bandages and propped up by a pillow.

“The Bomb stitched it up,” Cardan informed her.

“What about my magic?”

“The magic only works if you remember you have it.”

_Right._ The glimpses. They could make you forget your very person. It was likely they could make one forget the powers they possessed, as well.

“What about your magic?”

Cardan shook his head. “Only you can heal yourself, Jude.”

She bit the inside of her cheek. Jude misliked the idea of her husband speaking in double. No matter how right he was.

Cardan’s eyes stole across her face. “There’s, um…” His bottom lip wobbled. “A coat of peppermint leaves under the bandages. For the pain.”

Jude had never seen him at such a loss for words. Nor so distraught. Her heart ached at the worry lines on his face, that trembling lower lip. She’d never cared overmuch about her own pain. Only his. She wanted to smooth it all away with her thumb, her lips.

Instead, she reached for his hand.

Cardan sat up straight, the wooden legs of the chair groaning as he drew back. He dragged his fingers through his hair, pulling out the curls. He seemed to be gathering himself, spooling himself back in.

Something bobbed in Jude’s throat.

“What happened?” She meant it in the sense of how they’d come to find her, but maybe she was speaking in double, too.

When Cardan looked at her, his eyes were dark, like the way it might feel to swallow a cold stone. “What happened, Jude,” he said with frightful calm, “Is that you lied.” He pulled a piece of folded up parchment out of his pocket and cast it onto the duvet.

“What’s this?” she asked, picking it up.

“Your note.”

Jude winced. She’d completely forgotten.

“A lie of omission, to be sure,” Cardan said, “But which was also very nearly a lie in earnest.” The temper in his eyes seemed to eddy, a roll of thunder through a storm cloud, pinioning her to the spot.

Jude knew which words he meant.

_**I won’t bore you by dying.** _

She’d scrawled them across the paper in such haste to depart, she hadn’t thought about the implication if she failed to return. Now, it seemed glaringly obvious. 

She pressed her lips together, then folded the paper back up. “You’re angry with me.”

“That,” Cardan scowled, “Is a gross understatement, I assure you. And entirely irrelevant to the heart of the matter.”

Her brows knitted together. It unsettled her, not knowing his meaning.

“How could you do it?” He wondered, and Jude’s eyes went wide.

Suddenly, she was back in the cave, fever dreams flitting before her eyes. Locke. Valerian. Balekin. Cardan. All looking down at her in disgust. Her stomach roiled as if it might turn itself inside out all over the coverlets.

Jude reeled, but she was no coward. This was the conversation they ought to have. Except, she hadn’t prepared any words, and she hadn’t caught a glimpse. So how was she to explain herself?

She was wholly unprepared for this. She was wholly unprepared for Cardan to hate her again.

“I- I don’t know.” Her voice quavered. “I was so angry. So full of hatred. It just happened.”

“If I had known, Jude…” Cardan blew out a breath, looking down at the floor. “You should have said something. I did not know.”

Which was confusing. Had he somehow found out about Balekin, and what she’d seen him do to Cardan? Had someone told him of everything Balekin had done in the Undersea? There was a part of her that would feel glad if she did not have to speak to it.

But then, why had Cardan asked for an explanation?

Jude turned a wary eye on him but found his face unreadable. “I was afraid to tell you,” she said.

The corners of his mouth turned down and he fixed her with a long look. “If you are unhappy here, Jude,” Cardan said in a strained sort of voice, “If you are unhappy with your life as Queen, or unsatisfied by your life with me in any way, you need only say it. I would never hold you against your will. I would not begrudge you or bring you harm for leaving, if that is what you so choose.”

Nothing of what her husband was saying made any sense to Jude. Her head was spinning.

“But do you truly hate me so much,” he continued, “That you would risk your life to voice your discontent?”

“Discontent?” Jude’s brows drew together. “Cardan, what are you talking about? This is my home. I am happy here.”

“You don’t have to lie anymore, Jude.” His tone was needled with such derision that Jude almost flinched. Cardan’s features turned knifelike.

She balled her fists at her sides. “I’m _not_ lying,” she huffed, her cheeks blooming with heat. “If this is some sort of trick to get me to leave again, I swear to—”

“It’s no trick,” he interrupted. “The Bomb told me what you said.”

“And what, exactly, did I say?” Jude clenched her jaw, defiant, spearing him her most ruthless glare.

_I will always be a challenge_ , she had promised Lady Asha many moons ago.

She might be mortal, unbeholden to her words, but that had been a promise Jude intended on keeping. She would not go quietly if that was her husband’s hope.

“‘Tell him that I hated him. Tell him that’s why I did it.’” The words seem to grit at Cardan’s teeth as he said them. Then, his eyes shuttered and squeezed shut. He ran a hand down his face. When he spoke again, his voice held none of the contempt it had before. “I knew you hated me, once. I did not know how deep that well still ran. You must hate me a great deal, however, for it to be your dying wish to tell me.”

_Oh._

Oh, _no._ They had sorely misunderstood one another. There was a largeness rising like a parachute in Jude’s throat.

“Cardan,” she choked out, “I don’t— That’s not what I… Come here.” She held out her hand, reaching for him.

Cardan looked at her like she held a poison apple in her palm. Like she was a death trap. Maybe she was. She certainly felt like it sometimes.

“Please,” she rasped.

The High King assessed her for so long, Jude thought he might very well reject her. To her surprise, however, he stood from his chair and circled the bed slow.

Cardan slid onto the duvet with her but remained sitting upright, leaning back against the headboard. He’d left ample space between them. Enough so that he did not feel any closer.

To Jude, that short span of satin sheets was a wide chasm. She hated every inch of it.

It would be a small thing, she thought, to close that distance. To take him into her arms. Instead, Jude twisted as much as she could without sending a spike of pain through her knee, and scooped one of his hands into hers. She fiddled with the rings on his fingers.

“You’ve mistaken me,” Jude said, suddenly feeling very shy. “I did not go to catch a glimpse because I hate you. Quite the opposite, in fact.”

Cardan gave her a blank stare. “I am not sure I know your meaning.”

A movement behind him caught Jude’s eye. The dark tuft at the end of his tail. It whipped through the air, to and fro.

Jude gnawed at her bottom lip. “I am not good at conveying the depth of my feelings.” She traced a thumb down the centre of his palm. “I am much better at showing them.”

He shivered at the touch. “I know.”

“At the revel a few nights ago,” Jude recalled, “A courtier asked me to dance, and I got flustered. You stepped in, which I was very grateful for, and you told him that I do not heed the requests of others.”

_I’m afraid heeding requests, even my own, is the singular skill which evades my wife’s grand arsenal._

When Cardan did not reply, she barreled on, for Jude would rather do that than look him in the eye.

“It reminded me of one such request you made long ago—a request I was unable to heed.” Jude paused, steeling herself. “For a while now, I have been contemplating how best to explain my defiance. So when I saw the glimpsing fog, I thought it would be better to show you in a way that removes all doubt. ”

Understanding was dawning across Cardan’s face when she peeked at him. He shook his head, incredulous, then shifted so that he was lying down on his side. He laid his head on the pillow next to hers.

“I cannot fathom why I would doubt you if you told me,” Cardan said, softly. His pine sweet breath fanned over her face.

“Because I am mortal.” Jude frowned. “I can lie.”

“Yes,” he said. “You can also be quite nonsensical for so sensical a woman. Don’t you know by now that I trust your word over most everyone’s?”

“I can’t see why you would,” she muttered. “I am the most capable out of anyone of deception.” 

His eyes bore into hers. “And yet, I trust you, Jude.” Even if he were able to lie, she could not deny him this.

Through their past, Jude could see every time Cardan had put his trust in her hands so very clearly, like fulgent pinpricks in her night sky—a bright needlework of stars. And threaded through with darkness was every time she’d betrayed that trust.

How dark his sky must be, how starless.

“I do wonder, however,” Cardan said, “What I’d need do to earn yours. Tell me what it is and I will do it if you’ll let me. For I should very much like to try.”

Jude thought about trust and all its requisites. How trusting someone other than herself felt very much like throwing herself off a cliff. Or pitching herself into a raging sea. Or falling in love with someone you’d vowed to hate.

She looked at Cardan, the planes of his face, sharp edges casting shadows in the lambency. Their fingers lay on the bedspread, laced together.

He made no move to draw away.

Maybe trust and love were the same thing. They were, at the very least, similitudes of each other. Mirrored objects. Both felt like losing control, though Jude had never been very good at that.

She thought about Cardan and how he’d oft lose himself in faerie wine and revelry. How even though he had known bare scraps of affection as a child, he’d been undaunted in the face of love.

Jude envied him, just a little, his ability to throw himself to the fray. To glory in that great tailspin.

It was certainly much braver than swinging a sword at your enemies every time they crossed you. That was brave too, but there was more certainty in it—a tangible aim, like throwing a bridle over the yawning head of fear and pulling it tight so that you might feel in control.

Jude felt a gentle nudge at her leg. Though there was still space between them, Cardan’s tail had come to curl around her calf.

There was a greater kind of bravery, Jude thought, in feeling every flayed nerve of fear, and not letting it control you. Maybe that was cutting off the head of the serpent.

“I love you,” Jude blurted.

Cardan blinked at her once, before his ink-slick eyes went globelike. “While that relieves me enormously to hear, my love,” he breathed, “I’m afraid it does little to help me understand.”

“That’s why I went to catch a glimpse,” she said, “And why I killed him.” Then, it all came rushing out of her on the crest of a breath, as if it had been living in her lungs this whole time. “I love you and I killed Balekin when you asked me not to and I don’t feel sorry for it. I don’t even feel a little bit guilty, because he deserved to die, but I hate the pain it caused you and I hate myself for being the one who caused it and I love you.”

When she finished, Jude clamped her mouth shut, not feeling the least bit comforted by her admission.

Her heartbeat a melee against her ribcage. She was both tense and heavy, at once. Saying it outright was more exhausting than almost dying. Which maybe should have concerned her more than it did.

Cardan had gone still as a stone next to her. “You went to catch a glimpse,” he murmured, “Because you wanted to show me why you killed Balekin.”

She nodded. “I knew that if I could catch one, it could show you the irrefutable truth of what I saw him do to you, what he did to me in the Undersea, how horrible he was. How all of those things made me betray you and how it was not at all out of spite.”

Jude drew a ragged breath. She felt raw, exposed. She sagged under the weight of it.

Rain tapped unsure fingers on the window. The fire in the hearth was down to the embers, consuming itself from the inside out.

“But I have not managed even that, and now…You must hate me,” she said to the coverlets, because it was easier to speculate with inanimate objects than to bear witness to Cardan’s expression.

“No.” A long, cool finger crooked under her chin, tilting it so she met his gaze again. “You’ve mistaken me, my love. I do not hate you. Quite the opposite, in fact.” Cardan stroked a thumb down the line of her jaw.

Her heart faltered. “Well,” she said, a tremor in her voice. “That _is_ a relief.”

“Oh Jude,” Cardan said, and then he was closing that distance between them on the bed, cradling her against his chest. Jude slid her arms around him, holding him with as much fervency.

She breathed in his mossy scent and really, _really_ hoped this was not another fever dream. Or if it was, that she would never get well again.

“I thought you knew,” Cardan whispered into her hair. “I forgave you long ago, my love. I thought you knew it was not your fault.”

Jude leaned back to give him a bemused look, but Cardan’s face was wholly sober.

“You’re serious?” She gaped at him. “Cardan. I killed him.”

“Yes, I know.”

“I drove a knife through his throat.”

“I’m aware.” Cardan narrowed his eyes. “Though, if you could be so kind as to spare me the rest of the details, I’d rather not hear them.”

She ignored that last jab, well and truly at a loss. “How is that not my fault?”

“It is certainly your _doing_ , Jude,” he said, “But I don’t believe any of us could have shielded Balekin from his own demise.”

“You mean because he was a traitorous bastard?”

Cardan snorted. “I daresay that’s part of it, yes,” he said. “Though, I think fate and magic had a good hand in it, as well.”

“How do you mean?”

“Do you remember the crown’s curse?”

“The one that made you turn into a snake?” She gave him an incredulous look. “Yes, of course. I don’t really like to reminisce about it.”

“Not that one,” Cardan said, a wraithlike smile tugging at his lips. “The other one. The curse that would befall the person who murdered the crown’s wearer.”

Dulcamara’s words from a time long past echoed through her pool of memory. _The crown is cursed so that a murder of its wearer causes the death of the person responsible._

Jude squinted at him. “But Eldred wasn’t wearing the crown when he was murdered.”

“He wasn’t.” Cardan tilted his head to the side, considering. “But he was its wearer in every other sense of the word. Until he placed the crown on another’s head, it would have been tied to him.”

“If that’s true,” she said, “Why didn’t he do something? Why didn’t he stop Balekin?”

“My father had been ingesting poison unwittingly for months before the coronation,” he reminded her.

Jude grimaced. That particular revelation in the Court of Shadows had brought shock to them all.

“He was weak,” Cardan said. “As a result, so was his magic.”

She recalled the flowers on the throne, withering to brown and falling onto the dais during Balekin’s coup. She’d thought that it had signified Eldred’s loss of magic, but perhaps Cardan was right. Perhaps it was the very opposite.

“So you’re saying,” Jude said slowly, trying to puzzle out the meaning of what he was telling her, “That my killing Balekin was because of Grimsen’s curse?”

She was not sure whether to feel offended or relieved. The idea of being a pawn, much less when it was without her knowledge, was a dislikeful one. Worse still, if it served Grimsen’s foul design. Jude could not deny, however, that such a curse would exonerate her in a more concrete way than a glimpse ever could.

Maybe she should be grateful that her husband was so astute.

“I was only suggesting.” Cardan gave a lazy, one-shouldered shrug, his curls spilling onto the pillow. “Whether or not there is truth to the theory, I cannot be sure. But I do not fault you for his death, either way.”

“I appreciate that,” she said, quiet, into their small sphere of reality.

It was unfair, really; the way he was looking at her in all his vicious beauty.

“You scared me again,” Cardan said, taking one of her hands in his. “It was like watching you fall from the rafters all over. And then, I was afraid you hated me again.” She marvelled at his touch, his confession.

“I do not hate you, Cardan,” Jude said. “And when I do hate you, it’s because I love you very much, and you have done something incredibly stupid.”

A laugh burst from his lips. “I do not have to wonder how that feels,” he said, and Jude’s heart gave a great squeeze.

Maybe sharing their fears was a little like taking off armor. They may only do it in this room, in this bed, but it was a comfort all the same. If there was anyone who deserved her unguarded, Jude knew it was him.

“I was afraid you resented me,” she told him in a small voice.

“I do not resent you.” Cardan shook his head. “Not even a little.”

“So, what you said at the revel, about heeding requests…”

“That,” he said, black eyes glittering, “Was about you being obstinate in the face of everyone’s wishes but your own. A quality which you needn’t have proved, on account of most people knowing it to be true, but which you insisted on proving, nonetheless, by frolicking straight into a Glimpsing Fog.”

“I was never actually _in_ the fog,” Jude grumbled. “And I most certainly did not frolic.”

“I cannot express to you how much I don’t care for semantics right now.”

Jude couldn’t help the impish grin twisting at her mouth.

“Why are you smiling?” Cardan asked, beleaguered.

“I’d forgotten how fussy you get when you’re worried.”

He gave her a bewildered look. “You almost _died_ , Jude.”

“It’s just nice,” she said, shrugging, “To be fussed over.” After a moment, she added, “We never had much of that with Madoc.”

He sighed at that and pulled her close again. “Worried and fussy are the least of what I am.”

Jude pillowed her head on his chest. She could hear the erratic beat of his heart.

“What are you then?”

“Beside myself,” Cardan said. “Driven mad. Terrified.”

“Semantics.”

“Regardless, I much prefer you terrify me in your usual ways.”

She angled her head towards him. “With knives and swords?”

“Don’t forget claws and sharp teeth.”

Her grin turned mischievous. “I don’t think I’ll have any problem heeding that request.”

“Later,” Cardan said, kissing her forehead.

“How much later?”

He arched a brow at her, fixing her with a pointed look. “You need to rest, Jude.”

“Okay,” Jude sighed, eyes lingering on his mouth.

It was most certainly not okay, but there was the small matter of her leg and her almost death to contend with. Jude reckoned she’d have to fight tooth and nail to lift a finger anywhere in the palace for the foreseeable future. Much less do anything strenuous.

So they lay like that for a long while, limbs tangled together as roots. Taking each other in like air into lungs. A tender thing floated, diaphanous and shimmering in the air between them.

Above their heads, blue bellflowers and deep plum hollyhocks blossomed, beautiful spangles of petals bursting from the loam. Cardan glanced at the wall, his mouth a crescent moon. When he regarded her again, it was slowly; bewondered.

Jude slid her gaze to his. There, she found two mirrors.

There, she was reflected.

**☽☽☽☽☽**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you want to know more about Cardan’s theory, read this post I made on Tumblr: https://slightlyrebelliouswriter23.tumblr.com/post/617328681656991744/jude-isnt-balekins-murderer-she-is-the
> 
> AN: Wow, this has been such an epic journey/test of my writerly will. This final part took me more than a month to write, but I have to say, I’m thrilled with the result. To everyone who found this fic when it was still in its first stages, and sent me so much love and encouragement to see it through, I can never thank you enough for taking the time to reach out and tell me your thoughts, or just generally express your excitement. It meant the world. And to the nonnie who requested, I thank you for giving me the opportunity to write this!
> 
> If you enjoyed this please let me know in the form of comments, kudos, keyboard smashes, and/or messages. I truly do read and appreciate every single one. If you’d like to be tagged in any future Jurdan content, I am slightlyrebelliouswriter23 on Tumblr, and if you contact me I’ll add you to the tag list!
> 
> Back to the forest now. -Em 🖤💫
> 
> Title Inspo: From the Woods by James Vincent McMorrow

**Author's Note:**

> AN: Well, Folks, I got halfway through writing this whump piece and realised I was either going to have to hack away a great deal of what I’d written, or turn it into a Two-Shot. So! To be continued…  
> The first line of this piece was inspired by a prompt by my dear friend, L (@deepwaterwritingprompts) on Tumblr. Thank you so much for reading! If you liked this, please let me know with a like, comment, or keyboard smash. I genuinely enjoy reading every bit of feedback I get, even the wordless ones. If you’d like to be updated on the next part of this Two Shot (to come very soon), let me know and I’ll add you to the tag list. I am @slightlyrebelliouswriter23 on Tumblr.  
> Thanks again for reading! Back to the forest now. -em 🖤💫  
> Title Inspo: In the Woods Somewhere by Hozier


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